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You’re a genius.
That’s what people tell you, time and again. You’re beautiful, you’re young, you’re witty and you’re smart. You should get yourself a boyfriend, you should smile more, and you should try to find love.
But you already found love. Trouble is, she isn’t here, and you’re not even sure she feels the same. She left you. She said no when you asked her if you could go with her, to help her heal, to help her recover. She wanted to go alone and at first you wore a brave face, all for her, because her needs come first.
But she hasn’t written, not even once, whereas your hands are sore because of how hard you’ve gripped your pen on some nights. Your eyes are always tired lately too, maybe dried out from all the crying, maybe from something else.
You don’t blame Korra, you can’t blame her. She’s the one thing left that brings you any kind of feeling, any kind of warmth, even though it comes with the pain of knowing she’ll never be yours.
The days are getting shorter, or maybe it’s that you’re sleeping more. The suits in the office are feigning concern at all the times you’re turning up late. But you’re tired, so damn tired, that some days it’s a struggle to put one foot in front of the other.
The weeks and months go by, and somehow you get through them, though it feels like you’re an actress in some crazy never-ending play. You pretend to be alert, switched on, tuned in, as any CEO should be. You get the damn city repair blueprints done, though you’d rather be sleeping. You get the damn meetings finished, though the only place you want to be is in bed.
All you feel these days is frustration and exhaustion, but you get through it, one day at a time.
Until one day, you just can’t.
“I quit.” You just announce it, in the board room, shocked faces all around. You don’t let them respond. You honestly don’t care, don’t feel a damn thing, not regret, not sadness. Nothing. You’re just tired, as always, so you go home, lay on the sofa, and take a long nap.
It’s dark when you wake up, and you’re tired, feels like you didn’t sleep at all. That’s nothing new, you’re beyond used to it now.
You stink, but taking a shower would involve so much effort that the thought of it makes you groan, and you close your heavy lids and almost fall right back to sleep. You figure the least you can do is sleep in your bed, and you somehow make it up the stairs, smiling for the first time today when you feel how soft and cool the matress is against your skin.
Sleep comes easy.
--
The next day you meet with the boys for food, though you end up just playing with it. You can’t even remember what it’s like to want to eat, to have an appetite.
“Hey, are you okay?” Mako asks. It’s not the first time, so you just nod like always, force almost every ounce of energy you have into a smile, and you explain that you didn’t sleep very well.
“She’ll come back, you know that, right?” Bolin says. He thinks you are upset about Korra. You agree, in all likeliness she will, some day. But this isn’t about her, she isn’t the thing making you numb. It’s something else, and you don’t even know what. You don’t want to feel like this. You want to be normal again, but you don’t even know how, you don’t even remember what normal is.
Maybe you’ll go see Katara, see if you’ve got some weird spirit voodoo happening. Maybe it’s something she can fix. Maybe you can go back to normal, and get to feel excitement, passion, anger, sadness – just something, anything.
--
The media ask about your resignation. You shrug it off, tell them to leave you alone, that you’ll be fine, and that you just want to focus on your true passion in the garage. They accept it, for now, and you’re relieved because having to stand up and talk like this - like everything is fine - it’s killing you inside, it’s making you wish you had a damn off-switch and you could just press it and never have to do any of this shit again.
You go to the garage that evening, thinking that maybe if you live out the lie it will keep people off your back, but also so that you can keep yourself busy, get out of this rut, and force yourself to be productive. But instead you pick up a wrench, sit on a stool, and stare at it. It should be boring. You should be bored, because you’re sat here doing literally nothing, and time is passing by. But you’re not bored, you’re not interested enough to be disinterested. You shift your gaze and watch the dust particles in the air, illuminated by the golden evening sun streaming in through the gaps in the steel shutters of the door.
It’s so quiet here.
Maybe you should tweak the v2 engine you started a month ago. You don’t want to. Maybe you should swivel on this stool, and start a new blueprint, there’s still plenty you could contribute to the city. But you don’t want to, and besides, you’ve already done so much. The thought of designing another building actually makes you feel nauseous, so you drop the spanner on the floor, and head back to the mansion. Maybe a nap will make you feel better.
--
You stare at the envelope. You recognise the seal, you know who it’s from, but you can’t quite believe it’s real. Korra sent you a letter? You feel something you haven’t felt for a long time, a shimmer of hope, a sliver of excitement.
You carefully open the seal, find the nearest chair, and pull out the single piece of paper. You skim read it at first, then take your time on the second and third. You smile. She’s okay. She’s admitted things to you that she hasn’t told anyone. She’s okay but she’s struggling, and you smile again, not because of her pain, but because it makes you feel special that she picked you to open up to.
You want to write back immediately, but you pause with your pen above the paper, trembling in your hand. It’s still there. You hoped it would go away the second Korra got in touch, the second you knew she was alive and hopefully thinking about you as you do her. But it’s still there, gnawing at you, making your eyelids droop, making you not want to do anything, not even reply to your damn best friend, the woman you’ve fallen in love with.
“Just fucking write,” you hiss to yourself, feeling almost happy that you’re pissed off with yourself. It’s something.
And so you do write. You want to tell her of your own struggles, but you wouldn’t know where to start. You’d sound crazy. And besides, she has enough to deal with, she’s trying to recover physically and mentally from that awful battle. You feel a tightness in your chest when you remember how she looked afterwards, lying on the floor, dying. It felt like you were dying with her.
You write back, and you tell her you miss her, and that you hope she’ll be all right, and that you believe in her. You want to tell her you love her, but it’s not the right time, maybe it never will be. Besides, just writing this much has left you exhausted, so you fold the letter, seal it in an envelope and put it in the out-tray.
Then you pick it up again and kiss the seal, “Come back soon,” you say, to nobody.
You go to lie on your sofa, and stare up at the ceiling. Sure, you knew whatever the hell is wrong with you wasn’t really about Korra, but still, you hoped you’d feel happy when you heard from her. All of this fatigue, this apathy, you hoped at least some of it was related to her absence.
It wasn’t.
You feel the exact same way, which is to say you don’t feel much at all, and the realisation makes you feel even worse. You feel hopeless, even though you don’t want to. You feel tired even though you don’t want to. You want to do something, but you don’t want to do anything.
It’s still light outside, maybe for another half hour. You’ve heard that the sun can lift moods, so you figure you’ll take a short drive, get some air, and clear your head. Besides, you love driving, you always have, especially when you put the top down.
And so you do drive, heading straight down your favourite scenic route, with your hair cascading behind you in the wind. It’s beautiful out here. Trees line either side of the road, their bronze leaves rustling, and the golden rays of the sun piercing through the gaps between. You’d usually be smiling right about now, but the smiles don’t come. Nothing comes. It’s like you’re nothing, you’re barely even alive, even when you’re doing your favourite thing.
You don’t even feel frustrated any more, you’re just tired, so damn tired. Maybe that’s why you don’t turn the wheel on the sharp turn ahead.
--
You don’t see Korra come home.
You don’t see her eyes widen in shock when she hears the news, you don’t see her tears, you don’t hear her scream of anguish, and you don’t see her crumble to the ground, pulling at her own hair.
You don’t grow old with her, or have a family together. You don’t go to the fair every year, and push cotton candy into her face. Instead, every year she’s at your grave, apologising for not being there, blaming herself, saying how much she misses you.
You never knew she loved you too.